Thursday, 16 January 2014

Lee Johnson and Sarah Lee have explored the countryside on and around Pendle’s three significant hills: Pendle, Boulsworth and Weets. This new exhibition of photographs and poems includes some of the little known places which lie in their foothills.

Haiku is a 16th century style of Japanese poetry made famous by Basho in his collection The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Haiku are written in simple language using few words to distil moments in time. They are inspired by the natural world, capturing changes in the seasons.

Three Peaks is an exhibition of Poetry and Photography by
Sarah Lee and Lee Johnson. The three peaks in question are all in Pendle and
are; Pendle Hill, Boulsworth and Weets.

Sarah and Lee work together and have known each other for 7
years.They are both passionate about
the landscape and one day starting talking about putting images and words
together.

The inspiration behind three peaks was to explore places
less often seen. Pendle Hill as an image is quite iconic and seen a lot, but
the places around it less so. In effect it’s an exhibition around hidden
Pendle.

Sarah and Lee set off on a series of walks together with the
aim of capturing moments. These moments are then expresses in a photograph with
an accompanying Haiku. The moments aren’t always simultaneous, sometimes the
Haiku expresses the moment before the photograph was taken or the moment after.

Sarah and Lee both have busy lives too, so sometimes Lee
would go out alone and take photographs. He would make lots of notes and send
these to Sarah and then on some of the images the poem was created simply by
looking at the image rather than being there.

Lee tends to work with what is happening around him, he
doesn’t necessarily have a plan, but likes to capture the feel of the place as
he is there, particularly to show the weather. Some of the images represent
beautifully sunny days and others are misty and more brooding. He starts with
the big landscape image and then goes down into smaller more detailed views,
which are often a landscape in themselves, albeit in miniature.

Sarah takes notes while she is out, but then writes the
Haiku later. A Haiku is a short poem designed to capture the moment, a sense of
the present. They are often 17 syllables long, but there are no hard and fast
rules. Haiku has been around for quite a while, since the poet Basho took a
journey and wrote poems on the journey, entitled Narrow Road to Deep North, it
was published in the Sixteenth Century. You can read more here

The aim behind the Haiku is to capture the atmosphere.When writing the Haiku, Sarah will look at
her notes, at images, and she is particularly inspired by maps and place names.
She says “They are often really atmospheric in themselves”. Some are quite
spooky, some witchy. For example:

Above Burnt House

And Wicken Clough

You watch in fading
light

Lee thinks both him and Sarah have a dark side!

The project was a new challenge for Lee. He didn’t know
Weets at all, although he spends a lot of time on Boulsworth. He also tends to
shoot in black and white and these photographs are in colour, and he had to
learn more about Haiku to make the project work.

The images were all taken fairly recently with the majority
being from November 2013. This brought challenges too; weather and light. But
you can’t organise nature. One plan had
been to capture the horses at Castercliff but when our intrepid duo arrived,
the horses had been moved.

Another image:Slaughterstones on the top of Boulsworth, we discussed in more detail.

It was a cold and misty November morning, and our
photographer (him with rucksack, 2 cameras and spare lenses) and poet (her with
pen and paper) spent two hours walking on Boulsworth. At one point they
experienced a standoff with some cows who had been causing trouble with many
walkers. As a result the image feels a little like the landscape is pressing
in, and the Haiku also has a sense of threat.

So as always, I hope you get the chance to come and see this
exhibition in person. The names of the places are all on the labels, so you can
go and visit them for yourselves if you want to.

We’ll end with a quote from Sarah, who says “Why not have a
at doing this yourself? Take a photograph and write a poem about the moment.
It’s fun!”

Monday, 13 January 2014

Nigel won the popular vote in the Open section for the 2013
Pendle Open Art Exhibition. His prize was a solo exhibition and here it is.

The winning entry was ‘Breaking all the Rules’….

This is a watercolour and is based on a football match, the
match between Burnley FC and West Ham in fact, which saw Burnley go up to the
premiership.

West Ham have the nickname of the Hammers, and in this
picture are reimagined as hammer sharks, the whole piece is a play on words and
names; look out for Chris Eagles as a seagull and the Bob Lord Stand become a
Cod Law Stand.

Nigel’s son owns the ‘award winning’ fish and chip shop,
Holt’s in Nelson so this also gets a mention. And, for those of you who like a
Chippy Tea, there is a print of this work in the shop – which is decorated in
Claret and Blue – natch!

Nigel is a Pendle born and bred man, who currently lives
down the road from us in Barrowford. He comes from an artistic family where his
grandfather and father were both artists. His Dad came along to help drop the
work off and was telling me all about his sculptures. They sound great and
hopefully I have convinced him to enter the sculpture category of the Open
exhibition this year. But, back to Nigel! He is, by trade a metal polisher, but
has always drawn and painted since he was a child. He first was inspired by album covers, Pink Floyd
in particular, and used to copy them and then expand on them and make them his
own.

Nigel works in his front room, often with the TV on and
music in the background, he doesn’t need peace and quiet – the more
distractions the better. He drafts the work first, then turns it into a drawing
and then works it up. He tends to work in either airbrush and ink or in
watercolour and his works all include lots of detail.

His work is fantastical, but it just comes out of his head,
sometimes he has a plan as to what the finished work will look like and
sometimes he doesn’t, it can just happen. He tends to work weekends mostly and one work
can take several months.

So here are the other works Nigel is exhibiting…

Nigel has entered and won Pendle in Paint
(the old name for the Pendle Open Art Exhibition pre 2003, I think) a few times
in the past. He likes to support the local ness of the exhibition and doesn’t
enter any other opens. We’re lucky aren’t we!

He has shown work in libraries before but this is Nigel’s
first show in a few years. He had a fairly big gap in painting between 1997 and
2005 when he started concentrating on making music. Nigel has a recording
studio at home and writes and plays instrumental rock music on his guitar. He
still does this and his next project may involve putting some of these
together, showing his artwork and music at the same time.

Tuesday, 7 January 2014

We’ve made some changes here at The ACE Centre Gallery. We’re
going to be having more exhibitions. As of, well now really, we are going to
have our main exhibitions on the First Floor and some smaller exhibitions in
Reception. It won’t be like this every month, but we’re going to try it out and
see how it goes.It does mean that we
can offer more artists the opportunity to exhibit and that we will be posting
more on this blog.